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The Problem of Porn

'The problem of porn isn’t necessarily that it shows naked people and sex acts; it’s that it depicts the pimp-and-prostitute model of exploitative sex as normal. And in enjoying a porn film a man usually doesn’t think about how that 18-year-old woman got there and what kind of circumstances would lead her to choose that life. (Go out with a few girls who act like porn stars on the first date and you’ll find out soon enough what painful early life experiences often fuel promiscuity.)When you realize that most of the women in most porn films got there because some man started abusing her from a young age, then it’s much more difficult to get aroused. And when the porn is filmed somewhere overseas and the woman has a strange accent and a sad, tired look on her face, then the reality sinks in that most of the world’s prostitutes aren’t like the ones on HBO’s Cat House and would probably rather be doing something else.

That implication has big consequences as we move further into the Brave New World of sex robots. Right now the stage one thinking seems to be that “Oh, well some day people will be able to have sex with some blond porn star robot. Harmless.”

But what happens when the robot isn’t a woman but a child? What happens when the sex being simulated isn’t erotic and intimate but violent and destructive? What happens when the sexual simulation ends like a combination video game and snuff film? What happens when a bunch of teenage boys pool their money to buy a robot prostitute they can gang rape? And what happens when that is what 13-year-old boys experience as their first initiations into a sexual life?

What will our world be when people lose their virginity to a machine?'